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WiFox Software Enhances Wireless Throughput by Up to 700 Percent

According to a recent report published by TechWatch, researchers over at North Carolina State University have discovered a potential solution to increase Wi-Fi speeds by up to 700 percent. Data prioritization isn't so much of an issue if your router is handling a one-on-one connection, but Wi-Fi performances are known to deteriorate considerably when multiple users are hogging the wireless airwaves, like public Wi-Fi hotspots for instance.

NCSU's new software, WiFox, hopes to circumvent this issue by improving Wi-Fi throughput in crowded areas with its own QoS (Quality of Service) implementation of sorts. However, while QoS prioritizes data traffic depending on the applications assigned, WiFox aims to increase throughput by giving a router (or an access point) priority to transmit data whenever it develops a backlog. This suggests the more clients there are on a Wi-Fi network, the more effective the software's traffic guidance system would be. Reportedly, Wi-Fi speeds increased by around 400 percent in a lab test with 25 users. That figure shot up to 700 percent with 45 users.

"One of the nice things about this mechanism is that it can be packaged as a software update that can be incorporated into existing Wi-Fi networks", commented Arpit Gupta, a PhD Computer Science student at NCSU. Gupta is also the lead author of a paper describing WiFox.

Apparently, WiFox is already turning heads in the industry, according to HotHardware's article. The NCSU researchers will be presenting their paper on the new software at the ACM CoNEXT Conference held in France next month. Let's hope consumers will be able to reap its benefits soon should WiFox prove its worth in the real world.